In the past 15 years, 1.7 million young people have left Poland in a bid to find better job opportunities abroad. This has resulted in a ‘brain drain’, leaving considerable skill shortages across the economy, especially in the construction and manufacturing industries.
Alarmed by the loss of its youth to other countries, the Polish government has recently decided to scrap the income tax for roughly two million young workers with the hope to tempt emigrants to return back home. From the first of August, Poles under the age of 26 who earn less than 85,528 zloty ($22,500) a year will not have to pay income tax. The threshold is high in comparison to the average salary in Poland, which is around 60,000 zloty a year.
